Romanin, probably with another copy of the account which he does not give in items, and writing earlier than Mutinelli, makes the sum a little smaller. In any case it is certainly one of the most extraordinary bills ever brought in by a Republic for electing its chief.
In view of modern methods it will interest some
Rom. viii. 302, note.
of my readers to see how the expenses of Venetian elections increased towards the end, according to Romanin:—
| Ven. Lire. | ||||
| Election of | Carlo Ruzzini | in | 1732 | 68,946 |
| “ | Aloise Pisani | “ | 1734 | 70,629 |
| “ | Pietro Grimani | “ | 1741 | 70,667 |
| “ | Francesco Loredan | “ | 1752 | 134,290 |
| “ | Marco Foscarini | “ | 1762 | 120,868 |
| “ | Aloise Mocenigo | “ | 1763 | 125,234 |
| “ | Paolo Renier | “ | 1779 | 222,410 |
| “ | Ludovico Manin | “ | 1789 | 378,387 |
Greatly increased expenditure for successive elections during half a century can only mean one of two things, the approach of a collapse, or the imminence of a tyranny. The greater the proportionate increase from one election to the next, the nearer is the catastrophe. The election of the last Doge of Venice cost five and a half times as much as that of Carlo Ruzzini. It would be interesting to know what proportion Julius Cæsar’s enormous expenses, when he was elected Pontifex Maximus, bore to those of a predecessor in the same office fifty years earlier.
The Venetian electors who managed to consume, or make away with, nearly eight thousand pounds’ worth of food, drink, tobacco, and rose-water in nineteen days, chose an honest man, though a very incompetent one, and the public showed no enthusiasm for the new Doge, in spite of the great festivities held for his coronation. The Venetian people, too, preserved their artistocratic tendencies to the very last, and always preferred a Doge of ancient lineage to one who, like Manin, came of the ‘New men.’
He was not fortunate in his choice of a motto for his first ‘osella.’ He, who was to dig the grave of Venetian liberty, chose the single word ‘Libertas’ for the superscription on his first coin; and on that which appeared in the last year but one of the independence of Venice were the words ‘Pax in virtute tua,’ which, as Mr. Horatio Brown has pointedly observed, ‘reads like a mocking epitaph upon the dying Republic.’
Manin was a weak and vacillating man, though truthful, generous to a fault, and not a coward. As Doge, he was bound hand and foot, and only a man of great character could have broken through such bonds to strike out an original plan that might have prolonged his country’s life. He gave his fortune without stint, but the idea of giving anything else did not occur to him. Before the tremendous storm of change that broke with the French revolution and raged throughout Europe for years, he bowed his head, and Venice went down. No man is to be blamed for not being born a hero; nor is the mother of heroes in fault when she is old and can bear them no more.